Chapter Eight

Mary Slater sat at the long, black, bar waiting for her best girlfriend to arrive. They were supposed to meet at The Primrose at 8:00pm. They hadn’t talked for a month of Sundays. They had both been busy with their respective lives. Their lives were very different from the other’s, but both were quite hectic.

Mary was wearing her best cocktail dress and eye catching red high heeled shoes. They were the type of shoes that girls talk openly about when no men are around. She wore a special shade of red lipstick that her husband liked and lots of jewelry hung from her neck and wrists.

Her husband was loaded, treated her like a queen, and spent gads of money on her. She was going to make the best of this ride for as long as it lasted.

Her husband, Roy, was just a little too old for her or so she thought at first and she had dated better looking men. But a girl has to look out for her future and Roy looked pretty good when she first met him. By the time they hade dated six months, her closet was full of all sorts of new clothes and shoes. Her jewelry had been in some replenishment then too. Soon it was nearly overflowing like a pirates lost treasure chest.

Most of her former inventory had been of the costume variety, not the real stuff some girls dream of. That had seriously changed after their marriage.

The stock market had been good to Roy these last few years and the trickle down economics that those in the know talk about in the newspapers and wealthy circles talk about had trickled down to her at long last. Roy seemed serious right when they had first met and that scarred her a little. Marry was keeping her options open as Roy sold his everyday on the big board every day.

She had heard these working terms of Roy’s from the earliest part of their relationship but had no idea what they meant. Now after several years of marriage she could use the terms knowingly and sound as confident as he did. She had gone to the library after a few months of dating him and had finally done her homework. Roy’s work was still a bit of a mystery to her but it made for a great life for the both of them. When he asked her to marry him a year later, she jumped at the chance.

Suzan Cline, saw her girlfriend, Mary, in the bar through the large, ice frosted, windows before she entered “The Primrose.” Suzan pulled on the long brass handle on the heavy door and walked in. The noise from the heavy traffic outside disappeared as soon as the thick door closed behind her.

Mary thought that Suzan looked better than the last time they had met for drinks and a meal, as she spied her across the room. Suzan took off her heavy coat and handed it to the young, attractive, woman standing behind the counter of the cloak room, took her ticket and walked toward Mary, sitting off some distance into the dark, wood paneled room.

Suzan was dressed in her best suit. It fit her perfectly and accentuated her lithe figure. She walked across the wide, carpeted entry hall, took one step down and then another. She entered the room with a smooth, slow stride. Mother nature had treated her well. Her hips swayed perfectly and captured most of the men’s eyes and imaginations quickly.

The image of the large bar filled with well dressed men and women soon came into her field of vision as she entered and walked carefully down those two steps and looked up. The gaze of several men at the bar followed her as she walked.

The bar was decorated with posters of the many plays that had been performed over and over again in New York in the great theater district near by. That had been the theme of the bar as far back as anyone could remember. There were many autographed photos of the well known stars that had dropped in after their shows over the many previous decades.

The Primrose had become an institution of sorts and had come to be filled with these photos going back several generations. They were hanging everywhere. Many sitting in the bar now had no idea who most of those people were. Some were long dead before the patrons seated here had been born.

Suzan recognized many of the people in the posters and large photographs hanging on the walls. She was an avid theater goer as her mother was. Fresh flowers sat in tall vases scattered around the room on many tables and on the back bar.

The large room was twice as long as it was wide with the long bar running the entire length of the dark, wood floored, room. The bar was over fifty feet long. There were always two bartenders on hand during the week, and usually four on the busy weekends.

Tables for two and four were lined up along the three remaining walls as well as in the center of the grand room. Several of the tables for two were high tops.

Marry hopped down from her stool as Suzan spoke and reached out to her. “Mary, you look great. Marriage and kids suit you,” Suzan said as they embraced and did that fake kiss thing that women often do. “So do you Suzan, climb up on this stool I saved for you and join me.”

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So, another piece of the puzzle arrives.

Hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

I can only write when they are ready and when they will talk to me.

Don’t forget to come to Facebook at R.C. Hand and Cowboyproductions52 to listen to a taste of my adult detective novel, “Atlanta.” It and two other of my books are now on Audible.

“Sunrise, Sunset,” my book of ten short stories and “Kazu, son of Osheda Kmasaki<” my Asian historical fiction novel are there as well.

More tomorrow, no doubt.